Catholic 1st Grade Homeschool: Day 3

Religion -

1. We started with the Lord's prayer.

2. Today we went over the Hail Mary together. I found these wonderful graphic cards with the Hail Mary verses on them. Each one takes up a full page, so I set my printer to print four per page and it resized them appropriately so that it made a nice little booklet (when I cut them out and put them together). On the Dogma Dogs CD, the last song is the Hail Mary so you can use this as a resource as well.

--> Make sure you are saying the Catholic meal prayer as a family at each meal! ("Bless us, O Lord, and these, your gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.")

Language -

1. We went over short vowels. You can either buy a vowel poster at an educational store or do what we did - circle the vowels on our ABC poster with a black marker so they would stand out. I am teaching Little Bill the vowels by singing "There are five vowels in the alphabet, and this is what they are: a, e, i, o, u. A, e, i, o, u. A, e, i, o, u. And these are our vowels." to the tune of "Bingo". I now initiate the singing of this song in the grocery, in the car, etc. to reinforce it.

2. We completed lesson 3 in How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This lesson introduces short a.

2. Today we will start using the language notebook. We are going to set aside the first five pages of the notebook for copying and practicing sight words. Today's sight word is "am", so I showed the word to Bill in a storybook, told him what word it is, and had him write it in his language notebook.

3. Handwriting Without Tears practice, as well as practice writing his first name.

3. We played the game, "Memory", using the uppercase and lowercase bears (find the link to the printables in Day 1).

4. I have a journal booklet for Little Bill. It is a blank journal with the bottom half of the page lined for writing, and the top half of the page blank for illustrating. I will give him topics from time to time and have him dictate to me (or write on his own as the year progresses), and then he can illustrate. Today I gave him the book, and let him decide what to write for the first entry. He chose to dictate a few lines from the song, "The Joy of the Lord", and then he illustrated it after I wrote the lines down for him. You can buy such a journal at an education store, or you can print out pages here and staple them together to make a booklet.

Math - with calendar time

1. We practiced counting as high as Little Bill wanted to go. If your child won't go high, make it a game by saying (in a fun tone): "Hey, do you think you could count all the way up to ...? Let's try it together!" Then we practiced counting by 2's.

2. Using this great number word printable game that I found at Confessions of a Homeschooler, I introduced the number words to Little Bill and talked each number word and matched them with the picture cards. I have discovered that one very effective way to teach new things, particularly in math and language, is to model the material, then have the child repeat your modeling after you, then finally have the child do the activity alone. You can try all three steps in one lesson, but it usually works better to model many times, then repetition many times, then finally independence. This can take several lessons to go through all three effectively. That is okay!

3. We did the domino addition activity again, practicing adding.

Science & Social Studies -

We read chapters 5 and 6 in Magic Tree House Dinosaurs Before Dark.

Notes:

These homeschool sessions are fairly short. What should you do with the rest of your day? You can look for other projects to do together, do saints day activities together, and read lots of books together. You can include your child in your housework and cooking and gardening and errands. 

These early years are a great time to get involved with homeschool groups and co-ops, take community classes for kids, join a homeschool P.E. class at your local Y, etc. Believe me, I have a high schooler and a middle schooler. I have been there, and the older kids have so much work now! I cherish the memories of the early years when they had so much extra time to be involved in all kinds of outside activities. Use the time while you can!